Conceptual Fields and Magnetic Field: a theoretical model for epistemological classification of tasks in magnetostatics

This work presents a theoretical model for epistemological classification of tasks in magnetostatics aimed at High School and Higher Education. The approach is based on the theory of conceptual fields and includes classification in terms of thought operations necessary to solve the tasks and in these situations’ parameters. Four primary classes of situations are proposed, namely, description of magnetic interactions, analogic symbolization of magnetic fields, non-analogic symbolization of magnetic fields and calculation of magnetic fields. These classes cannot be reduced one to another, however they can occur simultaneously in the same task. Each one was subdivided in secondary classes of situations based on parameters they can assume and ordered by epistemological complexity. As contributions for physics teaching research this work offers a theoretical-methodological model for analyzing students’ progression in the conceptual field of magnetostatics, a conceptual structure for building situations based on predicative and operational competences for understanding the concept of magnetic field, and a practical example of epistemological classification of situations that can be adapted for other areas of Science like Quantum Mechanics, for example.

TERMINOLOGICAL CONCEPTUALIZATION IN HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

The article considers health care terminology in the cognitive aspect of professional knowledge cognition and conceptualization by an expert. We apply the notion of frame semantics as the linguistics method introduced by Charles Fillmore as the model of professional cognition in the process of professional communication. So the aim of our research is to illustrate cognition in science from the point of conceptualization of professional terminology and health care terminology in particular. The frame that marks the conceptual structure of a health care terminology is also the issue of our analysis. Following these approaches, the study of health care terms takes into account the frame semantics and its role in cognition and afterwards the nomination of professional knowledge in health care. Since concept represents the basic units of processing, storage and transfer of knowledge - therefore, one of the main properties of the frame is the categorical nature of the knowledge organization i.e., formation in the concept a phenomenon, an object, symptoms of a particular diseases, and modeling its relationship with other units of professional knowledge. Thus, the method of frame analysis was also used to study the texts of health care, which consists in modeling the concept by combining different types of basic frames: subject, action, possessive, taxonomic, and comparative.

Gendering Madness and Doubling Disability in Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre has a well-designed structure of a bildungsroman that focuses on the pursuit of Jane’s desire and ignores the same for Bertha. The conceptual structure conveys a linear discourse to determine a prefixed understanding of Bertha, Jane, and Rochester. In Bertha’s context, the bildungsroman operates to deliver issues of race, gender, and disability in an existential quest to ascertain and establish her madness. There is a well-designed structural correspondence of bildungsroman, interplay of dark and light binary, the desire of Jane against the asexual Bertha, and the metaphor of fire in mapping the doubling. The literary devices serve as a dominant metaphorical barrier to normalcy in Thornfield. The paper considers this authorial viewpoint on Bertha’s sickness as a construct of a parallel gendered and a more potent conceptualisation of madness. In problematising madness, the paper argues a cultural narrative of representation that is affected by the impaired mind of Bertha. It will interrogate how the narrative systematically forges a doubling within which she is objectified, influenced, muted, bounded and characteristically disabled.

On the question of the multimodality of perceptions and its reflection in language

The article focuses on the semantics of the Bulgarian lexeme глух, examined on a wider Slavic, Balkan and Indo-European background. The emphasis is on the phenomenon of verbal synaesthesia, which allows the manifestation of the cross-modal character of many image schemes that gave rise to its semantic structure. The analysis is an opportunity to verify the established models of metaphorical projections from lower to higher modalities with respect to the Bulgarian lexeme глух. The relationship between perception and conceptual structure is being studied with particular interest in contemporary linguistics, so the study of the role of non-visual experience in structuring a semantic system in a language complements the general idea of linguistic synaesthesia and its role in all languages.

Metaphor, magic, and mental disorder: Poetics and ontology in Mexican (Purépecha) curanderismo

This article offers an epistemological, poetic, and ontological reading of the ways of knowing regarding mental disorders that are characteristic of the traditional healers ( curanderas and curanderos) of an Indigenous group in Mexico. The study is based on ethnographic interviews with traditional Purépecha (Tarascan) healers in rural Michoacan. Interviews focused on local conceptions of emotional and mental illness, especially Nervios, Susto, and Locura (nerves, fright, and madness). We discuss the conceptual structure of these Indigenous illness notions, the nature of the associated imagery and notions of the soul, as well as the general sense of meaningfulness and reality implicit in Purépecha curanderismo. The highly metaphorical modes of understanding characteristic of these healers defy analysis in purely structuralist terms. They do, however, have strong affinities with the Renaissance “episteme” or implicit framework of understanding described in The Order of Things, Michel Foucault's classic study of modes of knowing and experiences of reality in Western thought—a work profoundly influenced by Heidegger's interest in the historical and cultural constitution of what Heidegger termed “Being.” After examining the individual illness concepts, we explore both the poetic and the ontological dimension (the foundational sense of reality or of Being) that they involve, with special emphasis on supernatural concerns.

Choose your own adventure: Vocal jazz improvisation, conceptual metaphor, and cognitive embodiment

Creativity in the form of musical improvisation has received growing attention from researchers informed by the literature on embodiment. To date, this research has focused on the embodied experiences of improvising instrumentalists rather than those of improvising singers. This article investigates the experience of embodiment during improvisation through a systematic analysis of the metaphorical language used by an artist-level jazz singer in her reflections on practice. Extensive interview data with the participant were analyzed to identify and reconstruct metaphorical expressions into conceptual metaphors. In this process, the metaphor of IMPROVISATION IS AN ADVENTURE was identified as the overarching conceptual structure that the participant used to make sense of her experiences of improvisation. This metaphor and its mappings illuminate the cognitively embodied dimension of vocal jazz improvisation. These findings will be of interest to jazz singers and vocal jazz educators who are encouraged to explore more fully the role of the body–mind’s interactions with its environment in order to establish expertise in improvisational ways of knowing. This research illuminates the multidimensional nature of an expert singer’s experiences of improvisation and is presented as a provocation for future research to include singers as participants when investigating musical improvisation and cognitive embodiment.